something of the nature of a coachman's velvet jacket.

'No matter,' answered the voice. '_Entrez_.'

The young men went in. The room into which they walked was more like a
working study than a drawing-room. Papers, letters, fat numbers of
Russian journals, for the most part uncut, lay at random on the dusty
tables; white cigarette ends lay scattered in every direction. On a
leather-covered sofa, a lady, still young, was half reclining. Her fair
hair was rather dishevelled; she wore a silk gown, not perfectly tidy,
heavy bracelets on her short arms, and a lace handkerchief on her head.
She got up from the sofa, and carelessly drawing a velvet cape trimmed
with yellowish ermine over her shoulders, she said languidly,
'Good-morning, _Victor_,' and pressed Sitnikov's hand.

'Bazarov, Kirsanov,' he announced abruptly in imitation of Bazarov.

'Delighted,' answered Madame Kukshin, and fixing on Bazarov a pair of
round eyes, between which was a forlorn little turned-up red nose, 'I
know you,' she added, and pressed his hand too.

Bazarov scowled. There was nothing repulsive in the little plain person
of the emancipated woman; but the expression of her face produced a
disagreeable effect on the spectator. One felt impelled to ask her,
'What's the matter; are you hungry? Or bored? Or shy? What are you in a
fidget about?' Both she and Sitnikov had always the same uneasy air.
She was extremely unconstrained, and at the same time awkward; she
obviously regarded herself as a good-natured, simple creature, and all
the while, whatever she did, it always struck one that it was not just
what she wanted to do; everything with her seemed, as children say,
done on purpose, that's to say, not simply, not naturally.

'Yes, yes, I know you, Bazarov,' she repeated. (She had the
habit--peculiar to many provincial and Moscow ladies--of calling men by
their surnames from the first day of acquaintance with them.) 'Will you
have a cigar?'

'A cigar's all very well,' put in Sitnikov, who by now was lolling in
an armchair, his legs in the air; 'but give us some lunch. We're
awfully hungry; and tell them to bring us up a little bottle of
champagne.'

'Sybarite,' commented Evdoksya, and she laughed. (When she laughed the
gum showed above her upper teeth.) 'Isn't it true, Bazarov; he's a
Sybarite?'

'I like comfort in life,' Sitnikov brought out, with dignity. 'That
does not prevent my being a Liberal.'

'No, it does; it does prevent it!' c